Polychrome
by Unique Sandwich
Summary: Perception is all a matter of seeing.


**Polychrome**  
by Kelsey  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine. CLAMP's. Cappice?  
  
Warnings: Um. Weirdness.  
  
Notes: Heavily inspired by Tori Amos' "Spring Haze." Kind of strange, and I'm not sure whether I like it, really. Done for RackhamRose's challenge to get a character to confess his/her love without mentioning the word "love."  
  
--  
  
He sees in lines, in jagged black outlines that form sketches of the world around him. The long black sweep of his mother's hair, the perfect white of her skin, except for the bloodred of hands and lips. Life in monochrome, but more than that, a life bare and painfully spare in its details. The elegance of simplicity gone too far, an erasing of all things that color a person's life. He sees in lines.  
  
Intellectually, he knew that sakura petals were pink, but he had never wondered about the shade, just as he had never wondered whether the corpses he fed to the Tree were in pain. The white light of innocence and onmyoujitsu shone through the little boy's outline, all colors balanced in such perfect harmony that they formed something new. And though he was unfamiliar with anything other than his black and white and bloodred, there was something about the boy's eyes...  
  
Curious, he added more lines to the boy's hands, and then let him go, for now.  
  
One, two, three, four, five, six. Seven years, every face and form no more than the barest of outlines, save for when they were painted with blood. The boy again, with his boisterous sister never far behind, shoving them together with a perseverance no more grim than a butterfly's. That one others would describe as having a colorful personality, that white light of her brother's refracted by some sort of inner prism into every shade of the rainbow. But his comprehension of color was no more than his comprehension of emotion, and her panoramic array of colors was lost on him.  
  
Her brother was a thing of grace, black hair and white skin, without even the barest trace of color, unless Hokuto-chan dressed him in red that day. The barest tracings of the finest of lines, something subtle and beautiful all at once, perfection in its simplest form.  
  
Impossible, though, to feel for something little more than a blank canvas.  
  
Later, he will wonder how he missed it. The insidious creeping of red tones into the boy's skin, an ethereal coloring made all the more prominent by blushing or any sort of emotional upset, really. When he opened his eyes once more--eye, more correctly--his vision now planar, a curious flatness revising his impression of the world, he found himself looking at not an outline but a face.  
  
Ironic, that he can see better with one eye than he ever saw with two.  
  
More years, but this time he doesn't bother to count them. The need for precision is gone; the boy-now-man lost the Bet and is no longer of any consequence. Occasionally he is interesting to watch, at times even fascinating to observe, but Sumeragi Hokuto's body lies beneath the Tree and all loose ends have been snipped away.  
  
But the game they play now has rules that Seishirou doesn't understand, much like the abrupt realization that sakura petals are, indeed, pink.  
  
He touched the hand that held the lighter, brought it to his lips and found it real, pale skin warm and yielding to the gentle pressure. The only thing yielding about the other man, it seems, for the battle begins soon after. If "battle" is really the proper term for it--more posturing than anything else, and that's annoying. Though the white light is hidden by trenchcoat and shirt, it still burns there. Too much kindness shackles power. Then he touched him again, drawing a streak of blood across his face and somehow, somehow, it didn't suit him.  
  
But his hand on Subaru's face--that fit.  
  
Two instances of contact, and now he can't drive them from his mind, forget that warmth so unlike that of blood. He can't even escape noticing that it's spring, and there are blossoms other than sakura even in a city of parallel-line buildings like Tokyo. Spring, and birdsong and tender buds on trees.  
  
He's missing something, though, and it's not the weather.  
  
Lips. Birdsong and traffic and any other noise whatsoever, mercifully drowned out by a kiss. Strange, because kisses are not usually noisy things, nor is Subaru. They fought again, but with words this time, and then he looked into green eyes, found himself cupping his face and leaning closer for what he thought was a better look but closeness prompted a kiss and he can't decide which is more extraordinary--the color of Subaru's eyes or the way he tastes.  
  
For once, he isn't sure whether he'll be able to sort things out into neat boxes, and he doesn't care, either.  
  
One thing lead to another--he never liked this phrase; doesn't one thing _always_ lead to another?--but nevertheless, one thing lead to another and it's pleasant to wake up with an onmyouji beside him, one that murmurs in his sleep just before he wakes up and promptly blushes at the sight of Seishirou next to him. A pretty picture: cloud-white sheets, pale skin, flushed cheeks, dark hair, green eyes. "Subaru-kun."  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"I see you."  
  



End file.
